


And I am Done With My Graceless Heart

by EponineTheStrange (gallifreyandglowclouds)



Category: Doctor Who RPF
Genre: F/M, Fluff and Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-04
Updated: 2012-12-04
Packaged: 2017-11-20 08:02:15
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/583095
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gallifreyandglowclouds/pseuds/EponineTheStrange
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Karen's ready to just give up on this thing with Matt, but maybe she isn't. She doesn't really know.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And I am Done With My Graceless Heart

**Author's Note:**

> A Ceilidh is a Scottish country dancing party, which is why I kind of figured that David and Karen would probably be best at it. Sometimes you have ceilidhs at weddings (I've been to two) or just for fun. Strip the Willow is the dizziness-inducing dance that ends most ceilidhs. 
> 
> Title comes from "Shake It Out" by Florence + The Machine. 
> 
> All my best Googling and Wikipedia-ing has certified the information contained herein as reasonably true. 
> 
> I have no idea where this came from, only that it interrupted my LOTR marathon.

At this point, Karen thinks, there is absolutely no chance that Matt is ever going to break up with Daisy. Which is a real shame, because Karen can’t stop thinking about Matt, even though she doesn’t see him every day any more and now that she’s back up in Inverness, they aren’t even remotely close to each other even though they live on the same (relatively small) island.

That isn’t to say that she couldn’t just hop on a plane and fly down to Cardiff, or London, but that would require thinking. It would require texting him to find out when he has breaks from filming, or whether he’s actually in London or Cardiff. The will just hasn’t been there. She’s barely heard from him or Arthur since their grand send off from _Doctor Who_.

She isn’t hopeful, and has (and she’s not particularly proud to admit it to anyone) resorted to internet stalking Matt, which was what lead her to the conclusion that she was an absolutely hopeless case. Sitting in her robe at noon in her parent’s basement wasn’t precisely how she’d hoped that “spreading her wings” would go after her post- _Who_ career.

The call from Arthur breaks her from the depressing train of thought.

“You get that invitation?” he says the minute she picked up the phone.

“What invitation?” She replies, and swatted at her parents’ cat as it crawled across her keyboard, typing gibberish into her search engine.

“To the gala thing,” Arthur says. “Please don’t tell me that you’ve been on the computer all morning and you haven’t bothered to check your email.”

“I have not been on the computer all morning, Mr. Darvill,” Karen says, cradling the phone between her ear and her shoulder in a desperate attempt to get the cat off her keyboard. This was one of the things that she didn’t particularly love about being back home. “I had to wake up first. And make breakfast.”

“Whatever,” Arthur says. “Basically, there’s some big do to celebrate the 50th anniversary, and you’re invited. Everyone’s invited. It’s in London.” He pauses. “You heard from Matt lately?”

“Not much,” Karen says, trying to sound nonchalant and generally failing. It was getting harder and harder to pretend that she didn’t care about Matt.

“I get the feeling that Daisy doesn’t approve of his weird sci-fi friends,” Arthur says, because I haven’t heard from him much either, other than the odd half-hearted text message. He and Daisy still on?”

“Don’t know why you’d assume that I’d know,” Karen said, trying to keep her voice as even as possible.

“I’m guessing you spend a lot of time on the computer, and –“ Arthur sounded as though he was going to continue but didn’t. “It’s down in London.”

“I’ll think about it, Darvill,” she says.

“There’s probably going to be ceilidh dancing.”

Well. Karen is a sucker for ceilidh dancing.

* * *

 

 

She did end up deciding to go, because she really did want to see Matt and Arthur and friends again, and because she wanted to escape Inverness in March, because she figured that there was nothing more unpleasant than Inverness in March. Since her conversation with Arthur those few months ago, she’d resolved to spend more time outside, which was no easy task for Scotland in the winter. This had led to her spending a lot less time on the computer, which led to a corresponding amount of time stalking her former co-star. All in all, good things. They’d exchanged Christmas cards, and the odd polite e-mail, and she was growing to deal with the level of detachment with someone she’d considered to be (for a time) one of her closest friends.

It was the little things that she couldn’t forget about Matt. Dancing in Almeria, and maybe the time that he’d drunkenly kissed her on the forehead (and she’d desperately wished he’d aimed a little lower). Running through the streets of Manhattan pretending that the Statue of Liberty was a real Weeping Angel, and staring at her without blinking every time they got a glimpse of her through the New York skyline. They were everyone’s super-weird tourists on that trip, she was sure of it. He was willing to be goofy with her, follow her on her wild tangents through space and time, like she was the Doctor and he was the dutiful companion. They could be free together.

It was that part she missed the most.

* * *

 

She sprung for a British Airways ticket to London, because she didn’t want to have to pay for all of her extra bags and snacks on the plane. The flight to Heathrow was a comfortable one, and the sky was clear enough in spots that she could look down and see the landscape unfold beneath her.

She collected her bags with minimal hassle, and was only asked for one whole autograph through the whole experience. She couldn’t imagine what Jenna-Louise was going through, being the current companion. Actually, she could, and despite the fact that she did desperately want to be back with the TARDIS and its controller again, the crazy amounts of press and publicity that came with being a part of the show were a little too much to handle.

She prepares herself to grab a taxi at the airport and make the slow drive into London by herself, but then she catches a sight of a familiar mop of brown hair and her heart stops.

She doesn’t want to suddenly fall over from surprise in the middle of Heathrow airport so she walks very slowly and purposefully over to Matt.

“Fancy meeting you here,” she says to him, her voice a little more wary than she intends it to be. But he’s barely been in touch these past months – how was she to expect that he was going to meet her at the airport. She’s trying to remember when exactly she told him her flight details.

“I’d say the same,” he said, stepping a little closer to her, not so close that it was a complete violation of personal space but probably close enough for some amateur photographer to interpret as more than platonic. “Arthur told me when your flight was getting in.”

She doesn’t remember telling Arthur that either, but at this point she’s willing to just go with it.

“Shall we?” She said, and he grabs her bags and she follows him to his waiting car.

* * *

 

The ride back in to London is terribly awkward, in her opinion. She’s pretty sure that it’s full of things that should be said but aren’t, like _You really need to break up with Daisy_ and _I’m pretty sure that I’m in love with you_.

But, there’s traffic, and Karen would love to not have to drag all of her stuff along the motorway so she’s polite and asks normal questions instead, despite all the batty things and rhythms that her heart is beating out.

“How’s Daisy?” She asks, not really sure if she wants to know the answer. “You two still on?” She pretends that she didn’t check up on that shortly before she left Inverness.

If he knew that she was bluffing (and he usually did), he doesn’t mention it. “She’s good, I guess. Although I think sometimes she’s in for the part time of this relationship, which… I don’t know.”

And Karen’s brain is off with the unsaid things again, except now it’s stupid stuff like _Why don’t you find someone who’s here for the full time, like me_?

There’s more of the awful silence for fifteen minutes, then he asks: “Remind me again where you’re staying?”

After that, she’s just done with the silence so she flips on the radio.

* * *

And as if things couldn’t get more super awkward, she gets a text from Arthur a couple hours after she’s landed and had time to collapse in her hotel room that Matt and Daisy have invited them over to his flat for dinner.

Excellent, she mentally groans, she gets to be a spectator to their domestic bliss.

She resolves not to drink too much wine when she goes over there, lest she do something stupid.

* * *

It’s nice actually seeing Arthur in real life and not in Skype, for once. They walk along the London streets, laughing like old times. They stop at Tesco for a semi-decent bottle of wine to bring to Matt and Daisy (just Matt’s, she thinks, even though Arthur is a bit more diplomatic about it, because she knows it’s his flat and they didn’t send out a joint Christmas card, which means that they aren’t yet living together), and it isn’t until they’re making their way up to his flat that her stomach really drops.

Daisy answers the door. She genuinely smiles at Arthur, but Karen could see a bit of spite in her eye when Daisy greets her. Matt bounces in to the vestibule and hugs everyone, despite the fact that it’s an enormously cramped space, and he’s about to try and get away with just a hug to Daisy but she kisses him instead.

Arthur puts his coat away as if nothing is happening, but Karen has to count to ten in her head to stop herself from punching a wall.

The flat is nice, but she can tell from the obviously hip photos on the wall and other assorted abstract decorations that Daisy has made her mark on the flat. Matt’s football relics are relegated to a small corner, and Karen makes a point of asking if there’s anything new.

Of course there is, and Matt is so happy to explain that he doesn’t notice the daggers that Daisy is eye-blasting at Karen’s back. Karen likes football as much as anyone else, but she’ll admit that it was mostly to spite Daisy. She resolves to be less passive-aggressive for the rest of the visit.

As the four of them sit down, the talk immediately turns to Doctor Who and sharing all the memories from the past few years. It’s mostly Matt and Arthur, and she chips in the odd laugh and quip, but she can notice that Daisy is getting angrier in a way that seems to only be on a woman’s radar, and Karen realises that she’s going to be paying for this in some subtle way later.

At an appropriate break in the conversation, Daisy chimes in. “So, Matt, why don’t you tell Arthur and Karen about our trip to Fashion Week in Paris?”

Daisy manages to keep the conversation steered away from shared things, so no Who-related memories pop up during the course of the meal, and it’s confined instead to awkward anecdotes from Karen, Arthur, or of hopelessly cool things that she and Matt have done together in the past few months. Karen refrains from getting to numb everything, but she doesn’t want to be bundled in to a cab or to say something desperately stupid. What she wants to do is throw up or throw a vase or a steak knife at Daisy. She hadn’t counted on how hard it was going to be hearing about this life that Daisy and Matt are sharing, and all the wonderful things in it.

Either Matt was exaggerating with the ‘part-time girlfriend’ thing to spare her feelings earlier today, or Daisy is one hell of an actress, and Karen’s damn sure it’s not the latter.

That should be her, not some twenty-four year old model with too much eyeliner. Karen feels so trapped that she can’t wait for the evening to be over, and wants to storm out the moment that Daisy lovingly presents the cake that “her darling Doctor” baked for them.

Daisy doesn’t watch the show, and never has.

She politely eats it, but her tolerance is wearing low, and Daisy mercifully kicks them out despite Arthur’s offers to help with the washing up.

Karen’s never been so happy to leave a dinner party ever.

Arthur calls a cab, but she elects to walk back to the hotel. She wanders through London, taking a far more circuitous route that strictly necessary, but she wants to get some things out of her system, because she would have probably burst into tears as soon as she was in the cab with Arthur.

She does start crying as soon as she’s around the corner from Matt’s flat, big heaving sobs that make her have to stop and lean up against some random building. Why did she just put herself through that four hours of torture to see something that should have been hers but just wasn’t? Was Matt blind? Was she?

Probably a bit of both. It occurred to her that this whole thing could have been some massively passive aggressive torture devised by Daisy because she had, in some magical way, discovered Karen’s feelings for Matt, but Karen didn’t ascribe that level of intelligent thought to Daisy.

She walked back from the hotel, still feeling a little wobbly and lovesick.

Lying in bed that night, she vowed that she was going to kill what she felt for Matt, even if it meant cutting her goddamn heart out.

* * *

The next night was the gala, which Karen figures will be fun. She always loved getting dolled up for events, and there were going to be enough people there that she could ostensibly avoid Matt and Daisy (because she for some reason insisted on being his date to every possible event ever).

As soon as she stepped in to the ballroom, she felt – different – sparkly. Which made little to no sense, but she stood up straight and decided to own the place anyways.

She shared laughs with Billie and Catherine, and nodded in sympathy to everything that Jenna-Louise said about being the new companion.

“Lots of attention, eh?” Karen said.

Jenna-Louise shook her head and rolled her eyes. “Are you going to say hi to Matt? He’s been looking for you.”

Karen froze momentarily. “Yeah, maybe later. I had dinner with him and Daisy last night.”

“God, I hate her,” Jenna-Louise says. “Always trying to pretend that she knows everything about the show when she actually couldn’t care less. Faker than plastic, that one.”

Karen says nothing, but nods subtly and smiles. Well, at least she isn’t alone.

Perhaps it's the whole Scottish thing, but Karen loves ceilidhs. It was something she’d been doing since she was little, and dancing with David in his kilt was a scream. She’s lost count of all the different Doctors she’d danced with, but at the moment, Eleven hasn’t been one of them.

She’d cast a glance over at Daisy and Matt earlier, and detected a slight bit of tension there. Daisy was becoming harder and harder to persuade to join in the ceilidh, and she could tell that Matt was getting a bit fed up and not interested in sitting out. She just happens to turn her head to look at them when Matt gives up, turns on his heel, and makes his way toward her.

Karen particularly loves the way that Daisy’s mouth drops in to a perfect O.

“There you are, Kazza,” he said. “I thought your dance card had already been filled. Can I have this dance?”

She’s honestly not sure what to say, because the next dance is a waltz and it’s slow and intimate, which is essentially everything Karen wants but has also been simultaneously avoiding doing with Matt. Against her better instincts, she says, “I guess I can give you one dance.” She smiles with fake confidence.

His hand fits on her waist and he steps dangerously close, and closer with every turn they complete. She doesn’t look at Daisy – she can’t, because she’s far too absorbed with the fact that she can feel Matt’s breath on her face and it’s making her knees go weak. All she’d have to do would be to tip her head upwards, and they’d be kissing. The thought gives her tingles.

He’s cradling her more gently than her other partners, more affectionately, and she’s suddenly not sure that he’s never reciprocated those feelings she has for him. All that’s going through her brain is _mattmattmattmattmatt,_ which is the opposite thing that she should be feeling this moment.

The next dance comes along, and he doesn’t even go back to Daisy and just assumes that Karen’s going to be his next partner. Strip The Willow comes though, and that’s their last dance, and as she’s watching him spin her around there’s something wild in his eyes that she hasn’t seen for a while, and that she certainly doesn’t see when he’s with Daisy.

Once that last dance is over, he smiles at her in that funny way of his, and hugs her tightly. “Thanks, Kazza,” he whispers in her ear.

She smiles so big at that moment she thinks her face might split, and Arthur is glancing at the two of them sideways so she steps away from Matt briefly to talk to him. But as they’re talking, Arthur’s face falls a bit, and Karen turns around just in time to see Matt and Daisy walk out together.

She can’t believe it.

Karen had thought that for those twenty minutes that she and Matt had something, that there were feelings there that didn’t just exist as a figment of her obsessed imagination. But nope. He could waltz with Karen as much as he wanted to, but at the end of the night, Daisy was still his girl. The room started to spin and Karen headed back up to her room without saying goodbye to anyone.

She falls back on her bed, crying again, bitter for what she’d had so briefly and lost.

* * *

Someone was knocking on Karen’s door and she really wanted him or her to stop.

“Kazza!”

Good god, it was him.

“Kazza, please open the door!”

She’s half in her pyjamas and her mascara is running from the tears that she’s been crying and there’s a pile of tissues on her nightstand. She can’t decide what to do.

“No.” She rolls over on her side, and hopes that he’ll just go away if she pretends that she’s invisible. She focuses very intently on the pattern in the wallpaper.

Now, he starts pounding on her door, and she can just imagine the paparazzi field day that would ensue if someone came out of his or her room and saw Matt banging on her door. Only to somewhat preserve her reputation, she gets up and opens the door.

“In,” she says tersely. Once he’s in (and she can’t help but notice that he’s been walking the rain without an umbrella, which trips something small and motherly she didn’t know existed), she crosses her arms over her chest. “What in god’s name could you possibly want here?”

He pauses, fumbles slightly, and then comes up with a slightly surprising answer, “You.”

This she cannot believe. “Do you honestly expect me to believe that after you walked away with Daisy back there?”

“Let me explain,” he said, rushing and shaking a little, which was so different from the eloquent image she has of him, “and apologise.” His eyes flick up from his feet to meet hers. “I took Daisy to her flat, not mine, because I wanted to let her know that things were done between us.”

Karen’s mouth falls open. This is a plot twist that not even Moffat could have come up with.

“Things have been… difficult, Karen. She’s simultaneously not interested and over interested in everything going on with me, and somehow she caught an inkling of how… how I feel about you, and suddenly it was a full-court press, showing up on set every day and trying to make my flat in to her own. I was going to end it before Christmas, before all this craziness started.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because when I tried, she threatened to kill herself in my bathtub. I wanted to get away but I just… I couldn’t have that on my conscience along with breaking your heart. So I stayed.”

Karen softens her expression, not expecting this whole story. She looks at her feet, ashamed a little for doubting Matt. “I can’t imagine how trapped you must have felt, Matt. Did she threaten it again?”

Matt nodds. “Said she’d ruin me if it was the last thing she’d do. But I had to walk away today. But, I guess after the first time, Kazza, I thought I could make everything that I felt for you go away with time and distance. That’s why I haven’t been in touch, and just relying on the fact that if we lost our friendship everything else would work out. But Daisy just got less and less stable and, absence makes the heart grow fonder, if you’ll forgive me the cliché. The final straw was when she invited you over last night to rub it all in.”

Karen smiles and laughs a little. “She’s craftier than I gave her credit for. You could have told me all of this. I had the same thing Matt – I mean, without Daisy, obviously – but I missed you terribly. Today while we were dancing, I felt that spark again, and when you left with Daisy… I just felt crushed. I just want things to be back to the way they were.”

“As friends?”

“No,” Karen says, words catching in her throat, “I guess not then. I want to be with you, Matt. I want… I love you, Matt.”

And there, there were the words that she so longed to say, out and in the open, and she’d never felt better.

Of course, then, she didn’t know that Matt would close the gap between them, just like he did during that waltz, and gently tip her chin up and kiss her. Yeah, that was probably the absolute best she could imagine.

They just stood there, kissing each other like a couple of love-drunk teenagers in the middle of the hotel room for what simultaneously felt like forever and not long enough. He was so warm, she thought, that she could just melt in to him, and his hands on her waist are delicate and sublime.

“I could have done this on the dance floor,” he says, “but I had to end things with Daisy first.”

“Matt,” she says, looking up at him nervously, “this is… permanent, right? Not just some crazy rebound thing?”

“Yes,” he whispers, and then steps back, and speaking louder, he says, “Karen Gillan, I will love you as long as I will love silly socks and bowties, which will be forever. You are the most wonderful and the craziest thing that has ever come in to my life, and I don’t intend to let you leave it without a fight. I love you, I love you, I love you.” He kissed her again.

I could get used to this, Karen thinks. He gently works his hand under her t-shirt and she gasps, because his skin against hers is nothing short of wonderful.

And she figured would be in store for a whole lot of wonderful, on that night, and for the rest of her life.


End file.
